< sigh >
I don't know if I'm missing something here - but that forum reads like a full-time commercial for Medtuity. Yeah, they've got pretty screen shots of all of the data gathering stuff, and a fancy picture of feet to document just where you poked your diabetic's feet, but take it for a test drive before you decide to buy anything.
We evaluated Medtuity less than one year ago for our practice. Initially they insisted that they would only do an online demo, that no "live" copy of their system is available for testing. In their online demo, where a salesperson lets you share his desktop while he walks you through their features, they couldn't complete an encounter, code it, print it, and put it away. They kept dancing around it - but the program couldn't handle these basic functions. Sorry, Medtuity.
After much wrangling they agreed to send us a "live" copy - and we agreed to purchase 350 "visit tokens" - half the normal initial purchase. We basically told them it was either that or nothing - I was not going to pay $700 to purchase a "demo". They gave us 35 "visit tokens" to play with - we never had them enable the 350. When we tested it, the program indeed couldn't finish an encounter. Also, the copy they sent us had an interesting problem - when you exited the program and restarted it EVERYBODY who has ever been seen is still in your building!! They told us "Oh! we fixed that!" - well if they did, why would they send a new client an old, non-working copy of their program? This bug kinda makes the program unusable - how many people are actually running their practices on this with it this way?
They then posted an emergency program update for us to download - and their programmer didn't realize, I guess, that you can't just update the Microsoft HTML library without testing things - the updater wouldn't run, and kept bombing with a runtime error. They had no idea why this wouldn't work, either. At that point we decided that while they have some ok ideas, the package couldn't do even the basics reliably, and we walked away.
They tried to save the sale, asking me why I kept telling them it didn't look very promising.. well, if the program's core functionality was solid, I could deal with bugs in the seldom-used features.. but the core functionality simply didn't work.
In case you were wondering why I would spend almost an entire week pounding on Medtuity, please understand.. we were angry with Jon, and ready to dump Amazing Charts..(over what I don't even remember at this point) We were SERIOUSLY looking, and looked at a number of products - and everything we looked at was much worse than what we have.. Jon and I made up, we worked it out, and here we are.
I guess, like any forum, take every post with a grain of salt. At least on the Amazing Charts forum, you know that we're all using this software to run real practices.
My suggestion would be if you REALLY REALLY want to track this stuff, create a template for it, so that the free-text of the notes can be parsed. The argument made by the Medtuity guy about granularity is somewhat correct - but I'd much rather that the work be done on the back end by a program with some smarts, than make the doctors punch in a ton of fields to get a few pennies more - our time is too valuable for that.
For the diabetes foot exam stuff, a template in physical exam makes more sense than a diagnosis code. In our office, all physical exam systems are in all caps, with a colon after the system. Creating a template for "DIABETIC FOOT EXAM:" and parsing for that text could do the trick, without creating whole screens or special pictures or other bits to slow down the busy doc.
Regards,
V.
